Public law cases are those brought, usually by local authorities, to safeguard the welfare of a child they feel is in danger. There are a number of different orders that a local authority can apply for but the most common is a care order, which means the local authority can make decisions as to where the child will live and with whom, and who and how the child will have contact with.

Designing a seamless digital system - which supports efficient and effective inter-agency working, so important in cases like this - will ultimately benefit some of the most vulnerable children in our communities.

Early views and engagement

Before the project started, in September 2017, I shared our early views on how existing e-working practices might be improved through our Public Law project. Since then the project has launched, we’ve held an event with colleagues and partners (such as Local Authorities, CAFCASS and legal practitioners), and we’ve got greater clarity about the scope of reform that we’d like to pursue.

These early engagement sessions have been invaluable in understanding the end-to-end process - from application through to final order - through the eyes of our users. We’ve also learned a lot about the difficulties that users currently experience in preparing for a hearing, the experience of a hearing itself and ultimately when court orders are issued.

This is where we feel we can make a real difference...

Making a difference

We want to make the public law process more efficient, ensuring the court, parties and their representatives have access to the right information at the right time to help decide the best outcomes for children involved in public law cases. Based on our early thinking, the aims of the project could be to:

provide an online application process which speeds up the gatekeeping process and shares information with partner agencies at the point of submission

improve the process for dealing with urgent applications

enable users to see the progress of their case and to take action to progress their case online

provide clear signposting to support available outside HMCTS, to assist parties acting in person and without a lawyer

enable users to upload and access documents and evidence digitally both outside and inside the courtroom

ensure suitable facilities and support are provided at hearing centres

enable hearings, where appropriate, to be conducted online

provide fast digital access to outcomes of hearings

ensure those who need it get the support they need to access our digital services.

Our approach and progress to date

We’ll take an ‘agile’ approach to designing, building and delivering each aspect of the new service. This means starting small, designing a new way of working, and testing it before making further changes. We’ll also learn from the other digital services that we’ve developed – such as divorce and civil money claims – rather than re-inventing the wheel.

After talking with people who have direct experience of public law cases, we’ve identified some priorities for the project: filing bundles of evidence and document management. We’ve already started work on this.
We plan to provide a shared storage solution to help with filing evidence and documents digitally. It will enable us to continue to be the ‘host’ for digital documents and evidence, along with an online application, to make up a digital court file. These mirror current paper practices, where we receive documents and evidence on paper and are responsible for holding, making available and storing the paper court file.

We are very aware that some local authorities have already invested in systems which help them produce and manage their bundles digitally. We’ll work with suppliers of those systems, and other stakeholders, so that wherever possible and viable, systems already in use can integrate with the planned shared storage solution and will continue to engage regularly with stakeholders.

What next

We hope to invite a few local authorities to test our first iteration of the shared storage solution by this summer. This will help us to test, improve and add functionality, before developing it further.

I hope this introduction to the Public Law project, its aims, the progress we’ve made to date and our next steps has been helpful. I look forward to providing regular updates through this blog, if you have any questions please use the comment facility at the bottom of this page.

2 comments

Making public services and public resources more accessible has to be a step in the right direction. The public need to be able to use and understand services that they may not be aware exist.
We (https://www.finalduties.co.uk/probate-questions-and-answers/) handle dozens of calls a month from members of the public who are often charged for probate or will information that they could have obtained for free simply using the .gov services already provided.